For the past 5 years, the highest performing air cooled CPU heatsinks have
all been based on a heatpipe/tower design. Manufacturers have experimented with
the shape, fin spacing, number of heatpipes and nickel plating, but nothing
fundamental has changed since their debut except for direct touch heatpipes.
Direct touch involves flattening the heatpipes at the bottom of the heatsink
and having them form the actual base rather than an intermediary material (usually
a copper plate) to transfer the heat from the CPU and pass it onto the heatpipes.

The first direct touch coolers we tested, the
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 and HDT-SD964 were very strong performers even though
they were significantly smaller than the competition. Since then the technology
has become more common with bigger companies like OCZ and Cooler Master adopting
it in many of their heatsinks. Given their rising popularity, we felt it apt
to investigate a pair of more recent models, the Titan Fenrir and the Cooler
Master Hyper 212 Plus.

TITAN FENRIR

If you are unfamiliar with Titan, we don't blame you as they are mainly an
OEM cooling solution provider. They are much smaller in the retail space and
Titan branded products are not well-known in North America. The name "Fenrir"
is that of a fierce wolf hailing from ancient Norse mythology; it's an apt moniker
for this formidable-looking CPU heatsink.

The Titan Fenrir is the first product to be reviewed in direct response
to user donations. This is a program which enables SPCR readers to vote
and donate funds for reviews of products of specific interest to them. For
more details, please see the forum Donate
for Reviews.

The box.

Typically we do not take time to discuss a product's packaging, but we would
be doing a great disservice not to mention that the Fenrir ships in one of those
loathsome sealed plastic clamshell containers that are notoriously difficult
to open.

Unboxed.

Inside is more plastic in the form of two trays holding the heatsink and an
attention-seeking chrome-painted 120 mm fan. The standard Fenrir has blasé
silver/gray fins, but our sample was an "X'Mas Edition" with fins
painted blood red and pitch black, a far-from-festive color scheme. Titan is
based in Taiwan, which has a little known, but incredibly macabre Christmas
tradition. A white box holds the mounting hardware, thermal compound, fan clips,
and a 4-pin PWM to 3-pin adapter with an in-line resistor to slow down the fan.
The Fenrir supports all of Intel's current desktop sockets, but the package
lacks a backplate for LGA1156.